Ideas, private institutions and American welfare state 'exceptionalism': the case of health and old-age insurance, 1915–1965

Traditional theories of welfare state development divide into two camps: societal accounts and institutional accounts. The aim of the present article is to amend and enrich the institutional approach to US social policy by reconsidering key aspects of the genesis of the American welfare state: 1) showing that concepts such as 'policy feedback' and 'path dependence' need to be extended to encompass the effect of private social policies; and 2) taking policy paradigms and agenda setting more seriously than is the norm in institutional scholarship. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. The first part explores the activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) in the decade beginning in 1910 and the genesis of Social Security in the 1930s, while the second part examines the effect of the private benefit developments on policy choices between 1935 and 1965.     

Social Policymaking and Its Institutional Basis: Transition of The Chinese Social Security System

This article discusses Chinese social policy development in response to the growth of the market economy. It provides a general overview of the system's evolution in three stages: (1) the pre‐reform period when a system of enterprise welfare was in operation; (2) a period of system transition; (3) the stage when state welfare began to take shape. These developmental trends are interpreted on the basis of three types of institutional relations: the State‐enterprise relation, the enterprise‐ (or employer‐) employee relation, and the individual/worker‐State relation. Moreover, the discussion deals with policy perceptions at each stage of the developmental process. Based on these analyses, it illustrates the transformation of the Chinese social security system in a broad socioeconomic and political context, where China struggled to establish a modern, market‐based enterprise system. The paper thus expounds issues of socialism, market forces and the power of organized labour.     

Welfare regime change – or lack of change – in unemployment compensation

Drawing on theoretical accounts of institutional change, this study explored the politics of welfare regime transformation in regard to Turkey's unemployment compensation system. By using the institutionalist approach, the study shows that the process of welfare regime change was one of “institutional layering” of unemployment insurance (UI) over severance pay. Also, the study demonstrates that the economic bureaucracy played a key role in pushing the establishment of UI (state‐centric approach) in contrast to the class‐based organizations that focused their struggles on the severance pay scheme (power‐resource perspective). However, the economic bureaucracy preferred a rudimentary UI design, which prevented UI from undermining the vested interests behind the severance pay scheme. Furthermore, subsequent attempts at the reformation of the severance pay scheme were not successful because the social welfare bureaucracy lacked the capacity to develop a policy alternative to resolve the stalemate between the societal actors. Lastly, the study used the successful severance pay reform experiences of South Korea and Austria to locate the Turkish case within a broader comparative framework.     

Employers and the Management of Retirement

In the UK early withdrawal from the labour market is seen as a risk and a cost, worsening the dependency ratio, raising public and private pension costs and threatening additional welfare expenditure over the longer term. Explanations of the retirement process have focused on the welfare state and the impact of pensions and other social security policies. This paper argues that a missing actor in these accounts is the employing organization. Early retirement in the UK has been predominantly driven by the labour requirements of employers rather than state policies to encourage older workers to take early retirement. There is a case for arguing that significant change in retirement behaviour in the UK will come primarily from the modification of employers’ policies. This research is a case study of three employers: one public‐sector and two commercial. It examines the dynamics of the retirement decision. This paper reports the public‐sector case. The findings indicate that employers, in order to reduce their pensions liabilities and stem the cost of early retirement, are trying to regain control of the retirement process. The employees interviewed felt they experienced little choice concerning their retirement, had limited knowledge of the options open to them and found pensions complicated and confusing.     

Post-Fordism, the welfare state and the personal social services: a comparison of Australia and Britain

Summary The Post-Fordist welfare state thesis locates contemporary socialwelfare change within a wider analysis of the transformationof capitalist accumulation regimes. Whilst this analysis isuseful in directing attention to macro socio-economic change,it has for the most part contained three shortcomings. First,the Post-Fordist thesis has overemphasized the role of historical'breaks' in the development of social welfare as it purportedlypasses from Fordism to Post-Fordism. Second, the thesis hasassumed a degree of convergence between welfare states as aresult of global economic forces. In doing so, it has underemphasizedthe mediating impact of existing institutional arrangementswithin nations. Third, the thesis has assumed, rather than demonstrated,the specific changes which are alleged to be taking place invarious fields of social welfare. As a consequence, aspectsof continuity in social welfare have been neglected. These threelacunae are addressed through a comparative analysis of developmentsin the personal social services in Australia and Britain. Servicesto older people are employed as the specific context of comparisonin relation to three dimensions of measuring transformationalong a Post-Fordist trajectory: a shift from a unitary economyto a mixed economy of service provision; changes in the modelof service delivery and consumption; and strengthening the governancefunction of the central state. This comparative analysis suggeststhe need for refinement of the Post-Fordist welfare state thesisconcerning the restructuring of social welfare and its impacton the personal social services.     

Is Sweden Being Torn Apart? Privatization and Old and New Patterns of Welfare State Support

This article examines the potential impact of institutional change on popular welfare support. The encompassing welfare state of Sweden provides an interesting case where the privatization of social service delivery has been widespread over the last decades. We use survey data from five rounds of the Swedish Welfare State Survey (1992, 1997, 2002, 2006 and 2010) in order to study how public preferences for the financing and organization of welfare services have changed over time. Based on a theory describing an ideal‐typical pattern of public support for an encompassing welfare model, we derive three types of public preferences: support for a pure state model, a pure market model and a mixed model (welfare services are funded by taxes but provided by private firms). We begin by tracking the development of these ideal‐typical attitude patterns between 1992 and 2010. We then investigate how preference patterns vary across municipalities displaying different degrees of privatization of social service delivery. Our results show that welfare support among Swedes over the last decades is better characterized as dynamic rather than stable. Swedes seem to take an overall more ideologically based position on the role of the welfare state over time. The share of respondents expressing such ideologically based preferences has increased from 54 per cent in 1992 to 78 per cent in 2010. This change is principally manifested in increased support for the state and mixed models. This trend seems to be parallel to the increasing share of private welfare service providers over the last decade. We also find a link between the municipal degree of privatization and support for our three ideal‐typical welfare models. Public support for a mixed welfare model and, to some extent, a market model, is comparatively stronger in municipalities where welfare services to a large extent are carried out by private actors. Conversely, data shows that public support for the traditional Swedish state model is more widespread in municipalities having a low degree of welfare services privatization. Lastly, we discuss some theoretical implications of our findings.     

The Retrenchment of the Welfare State in Latin America: The Case of Argentina

According to the conventional approving account of the transformations which have been taking place in public policy and in markets in Latin America, Argentina constitutes one of the most successful examples of wide-ranging and rapid change. Certainly the experience of Argentina offers an excellent case-study of what in the literature is termed " the retrenchment of the welfare states"; that is those institutional transformations associated with the "neoconservative revolutions" of recent years. In this paper I analyse the characteristics of Argentinian welfare state retrenchment, distinguishing between two fields of analysis: (1) "systemic retrenchment" which is linked to changes in the "referential environment" of social policy institutions, especially changes in the economic, fiscal, labour market and politico-institutional contexts: (2) "programmatic retrenchment" which refers to changes in the institutional ordering of specific social policies. Finally I draw conclusions in respect of the strategies adopted for the retrenchment of the welfare state in Argentina and discuss probable prospects for the future.     

Neither Hybrid nor Unique: A Reinterpretation of the East Asian Welfare Regime

Some researchers have been convinced that welfare developments in East Asia, especially Japan and Korea, can be fitted into the existing three worlds of welfare model, while others have insisted that existing welfare regime theories are not able to explain East Asian welfare regimes. This article assumes that we need to go beyond both of these traditional explanations. In the welfare state research fields, welfare regime approaches tend to focus on specific contextual conditions and cross‐national differences. As a result, they tend to overemphasize history at the expense of theory. This article tries to combine deductive causal modeling with an institutional–historical context by identifying the contingent rent political game model and deducing important characteristics of East Asian welfare regime from this model. This model opens out the possibility of change in East Asian welfare regimes following the processes of democratization and globalization. Details of this are given in the conclusion.     

Frame evolution: A new approach to understanding changes in diversity reforms at public universities in the United States

University diversity policy in the past two decades has shifted from rationales that focused on social justice to ones that emphasize educational excellence [Lipson, D. (2007, Fall). Embracing diversity: The institutionalization of affirmative action as diversity management at UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, and UW-Madison. Law & Social Inquiry, 32(4), 985–1026; Moreno, J. F., Smith, D. G., Parker, S., Clayton-Pedersen, A. R., & Teraguchi, D. H. (2006). Using multiple lenses: An examination of the economic and racial/ethnic diversity of college students. Report from the James Irvine Foundation Campus Diversity Initiative; Moses, M. S., & Chang, M. J. (2006). Toward a deeper understanding of the diversity rationale. Educational Researcher, 35(1), 6–11; Skrenty, J. D. (2002). The minority rights revolution. Princeton University Press]. The consensus among diversity scholars is that this shift has taken place as a result of Federal court decisions restricting the use of affirmative action in admissions. This paper sheds new light on these shifts in rationale by proposing a new theory of frame evolution. I developed this, an extension to Snow et al.’s [Snow, D. A., et al. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 464–481] theory of frame alignment, as a way to show how policy discourses evolve to accommodate changing demands. I argue that policy frames tend to evolve in a sequential pattern of accommodation, consolidation, and bridging. In-depth interview data with 41 diversity advocates at four public universities in the United States reveal three stages in the frame evolution process: the first motivated by a need to accommodate existing institutional norms, the second motivated by a need to build a core constituency of supporters, and the third with the aim of converting those “on the fence” into policy supporters. In the case of higher education diversity policy, the three stages equate to a maintenance frame, a social justice frame, and an excellence frame.     

Digging their Own Graves: Unexpected Consequences of Institutional Design and Welfare State Changes

This article proposes a theoretical mechanism for explaining why various components of a welfare state may develop differently, given similar economic, political and ideological contexts. Evaluating welfare state plans as products of political processes, the article looks at the role of political actors and their mistakes, considering how these mistakes shape future social policy-making. The article identifies 'unexpected consequences' of institutional design: situations where the decisions of powerful actors lead to the empowerment of their rivals, which in turn may change policies to their advantage. Drawing on a case study from the Israeli welfare state, namely, the introduction and then abolishment of income testing in the Children's Insurance Plan, the article demonstrates how this mechanism may have allowed certain political actors to protect welfare state plans in the face of neo-liberal pressures. It discusses how other political actors can take advantage of similar situations and notes the conditions needed for success.     

Changing Welfare Regimes in East and Southeast Asia: Crisis, Change and Challenge

The Asia‐Pacific region is a latecomer to the development of the welfare state. However, in some countries, governments have implemented ambitious programmes to extend social security systems and to enlarge the institutional structure of their welfare states. Comparative study of the welfare systems in East and Southeast Asia is, however, underdeveloped and there still is a relative lack of accurate knowledge about welfare systems in the region. Since the Asian financial crisis, more attention has been paid to the social policies of the countries. This paper examines features of welfare regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, and undertakes a systematic review of the development, levels and patterns of welfare regimes in the region. Two core questions are answered: can the existing welfare systems help mitigate the social impact of the financial and economic crisis? What are the needs, challenges and developmental perspectives that inform the future of welfare regimes in this region?     

Social policy and poverty in post-totalitarian Europe

This article attempts to compare the social policy models of the west with social policies in post-totalitarian central and eastern Europe. It is argued that historical roots as well as recent developments make post-Communist social policy similar to the two major models in the west: the institutional redistributive model and the industrial achievement or performance model. The present problems of mass unemployment and growing poverty cannot be solved without a major reform of social policy, including state intervention and control. The residual social safety net and a strong market orientation are unlikely to be able to reduce poverty and unemployment. However, it is also argued that the strong role of the state and organized labour in both of these European welfare systems creates an obstacle to the future of social policy in the countries of central and eastern Europe. The state is viewed with great scepticism and organized mass social movements are weak in most of these countries. It will take time to develop such agents that can support the development of state social policy, and it may not even be accepted that the route of interventionist state welfare characteristic of western Europe is desirable.     

Building state capacity for welfare governance: The pathway and development of child welfare system and social work in China

ABSTRACT

China’s dramatic socioeconomic transformation after the reform and opening up, coincided with changes in state-family relationship, has resulted in a large number of children at risk of care. In the past three decades, child welfare has been highly concerned by the government and society, and the child welfare system has substantially developed in the direction of establishing a moderately universal system. In this process, the development of child welfare and social work has shown a mutually reinforcing trend. This includes the professionalisation of child welfare services, the professional training of child welfare workers and the advancement of child welfare policies. The governance of child welfare is an essential component of national social governance. Its future development should be oriented towards a developmental and holistic approach of governance, and social work as an important institutional actor plays a critical role in promoting good governance of child welfare and beyond.     

中国社会养老的文化分析

本文关注福利文化对社会养老制度和实践的影响,从文化视角审视中国现代社会养老项目的发展,揭示了老年社会福利模式与特定社会政策制定者对社会福利概念的理解和传统福利文化之间的关系。限定主义的价值观和公民权利意识的缺失阻碍着中国老年社会福利模式从剩余性到制度性的转变,抑制了社会福利在缩小老年群体内阶层差异方面的作用,促使了福利资源分配的不公。尽管人口老龄化和福利国家的文化扩散正在促使中国老年社会福利呈多元化发展趋势,多元福利体系的最终建立还有赖于社会公众和政策制定者对个人和国家关系的重新解读。     

Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe: Neither Complete Altruists nor Free-riders

In the framework of the SOCCARE Project, focusing on families dealing with a double front of care for children and frail elderly people, similarities can be found in Italy, France and Portugal beyond their different welfare regimes. The comparison of family histories and caregiving strategies, by the methodology of case‐matching, gives an interesting overview of the relationship between the debate on social care and that on the intergenerational contract. The paper aims to understand which are the available combinations of family, informal and institutional resources making a heavy burden of care “acceptable and still normal”: this focuses both typical situations of each country and common features through the countries. The results show how changes in the representations of obligation and duty in the intergenerational pact produce different outcomes and demands in welfare systems. The analysis of shifting boundaries between the public and private spheres in care provides useful policy recommendations, aimed at improving choices and “sustainable” responsibilities of individuals, families and social networks. Sustainable policies seem to be more dependent on family and structural types and resources of networks than on different welfare and services support.     

Towards a Two-dimensional Analysis of Welfare Ideologies

This article provides a critical analysis of some accounts of welfare ideologies which have appeared in the last eight years. It is argued that in these accounts welfare ideologies have been presented as ranged along a continuum from "anti-collectivist", "market liberal", or "residual" to "Marxist" or "structural" with intermediate positions variously described as "political liberal", "reluctant collectivist", "social democratic", "Fabian socialist", or "institutional". It is further argued that these one-dimensional accounts are seriously misleading because they fail to give sufficient recognition to the part played by conservatism in the development and justification of modern interventionist states and because they identify Marxism with collectivism and ignore the anti-collectivist strand in socialist thought. These elements are more easily accommodated within an alternative two-dimensional framework for the analysis of welfare ideologies which is briefly outlined.     

Social Politics and Policy in an Era of Globalization: Critical Reflections

This paper critically examines the ways in which social policy is said to be affected by globalization. The prevailing approach has been framed in terms of the impact of "external" economic forces on national welfare states. Globalization is said to undermine the economic and political conditions on which welfare states were built, erode national policy autonomy and force the marketization and residualization of welfare states. These predictions are found wanting on the grounds that they share many of the assumptions, and therefore also the faults, of "strong" globalization theory. A more nuanced account of the way in which social politics and social policy are affected by globalization is needed and a global governance perspective is outlined. This, it is argued, better captures the political and institutional environment in which social policy is formulated and implemented. It also recognizes the importance of "local" factors and their interaction with global ones in shaping political responses, including social policy, to globalization. The discussion highlights the enduring power of "local" forces—those which are at the level of and internal to states—and of politics and ideology in shaping the process of globalization and ultimately its implications for welfare states and social policies.     

Industrial Relations as a Source of Social Policy: A Typology of the Institutional Conditions for Industrial Agreements on Social Benefits

The article's starting point is that the now‐conventional conceptualization of welfare state retrenchment as a shift from state provision of income support to market processes is misleading. Rather, state provision may be replaced by benefits negotiated collectively by trade unions and employers. As a first step to further investigate this development the article suggests a typology of institutional contexts within which industrial agreements on social benefits emerge. This typology is based on Thomas H. Marshall's distinction between political and industrial citizenship. Following the comparative method of the ‘parallel demonstration of theory’, the typology is applied to four countries where collective agreements on social benefits have recently been concluded, namely Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Germany. It is argued that, on the one hand, the state's activity or passivity in labour relations and, on the other hand, the timing of the institutionalization of political and industrial citizenship is decisive for the development of collectively negotiated benefits. The conclusion for comparative welfare state research is that, when viewing policies of welfare state retrenchment, the research should systematically include industrial relations and their historical trajectories in its frame of reference.     

THE WAGE EARNERS' WELFARE STATE REVISITED: REFURBISHING THE ESTABLISHED MODEL OF AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL PROTECTION, 1983–93

This article sets out to give an overview of the most significant policy changes and developments influencing the development of social protection in Australia in the past decade. Rather than focussing on an assessment of gains and losses within the narrow confines of the state welfare system, it looks at what has happened to the broad configuration of policies which have come to constitute Australia's highly distinctive wage earners' welfare state. Overall, the conclusion is that the institutional forms and normative goals of the wage earner's welfare state have proved far more resilient and adaptable than critics have assumed likely, with targeting, award-based superannuation and women's welfare singled out as the most interesting areas in which Labor has contributed to the refurbishing of the established model.     

Red states,blue states: How well do the recent national election labels capture state political and policy differences?

The alleged polarization between the so-called red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states during the presidential elections has been examined using only voter surveys. Focusing on the recent thirteen national elections from 1964 to 2012, we examine social, political, institutional, and policy indicators of the 50 American states to (1) gauge the extent to which national election results reflect significant policy and political differences between the red and blue states and (2) to assess the explanatory power of the dichotomous red–blue label relative to a continuous variable of “redness” or “blueness” by the percentage of votes received. We find substantial political and some moderate social differences between red and blue states but fewer institutional and policy differences than one would expect if there were actually deep divisions between the states. We find that the red–blue state distinction performs well when compared to the explanatory power of the more precise redness or blueness of a state.